A gorgeous pizza
Having made our pizza dough, it was cooking time!
The ideal is to have a wood fired oven in your back garden, but not many of us are that lucky, so improvisation is key. Clint made it look easy, but there was lots of balancing and tweaking being done. I know that I will struggle the first few times on my own before I get the hang of it.
The ideal is to have a wood fired oven in your back garden, but not many of us are that lucky, so improvisation is key. Clint made it look easy, but there was lots of balancing and tweaking being done. I know that I will struggle the first few times on my own before I get the hang of it.
The first step was to shape the dough. Not a rolling pin in sight Clint was shaping the dough by hand. He made it looks deceptively easy, but my effort was an unattractive oval!
Unconventionally the pizza is placed onto the stone with out any toppings to get a head start in the cooking process. Again, Clint made the flick off the paddle onto the stone look deceptively easy, but on my only attempt I partially missed the stone and some of my dough ended up on the bars!
After the base has had a couple of minutes to start crisping up the tomato sauce and toppings are added. When you are done close the lid on the BBQ to get the heat circulating. We found that all of the toppings cooked pretty quickly.
Once it's done, whip it off the BBQ, cut and enjoy!
Method:
1. Heat your BBQ on maximum to get everything nice and hot.
2. Take a ball of dough, flour it liberally on both sides to stop it sticking to your hands and flatten it out slightly.
3. Liberally sprinkle your pizza paddle with semolina to stop the pizza sticking when you place it on the paddle.
4. Starting turning the dough on your finger tips with the dough facing up, parallel to the floor. As it stretches it will begin to fall down one side of your hands. Keep the dough moving constantly until you are happy with the size and then lay it on the paddle.
5. Slide the dough onto the pizza stone. Close the lid and let it cook for 1 - 2mins to give the base a head start in cooking.
6. Add the tomato sauce (pasatta, garlic, chilli and dried Italian herbs) and the desired toppings.
7. Close the lid of the BBQ and cooking until your toppings and the base is done.
You want to keep the temperature on the BBQ pretty high throughout, but it will need constant tweaking so the topping / base don't cook too quickly in relation to each other.
Things to try:
The best pizzas I've eaten have had a crunchy top to the crust round the edge of the pizza. Sadly ours didn't. I'm tempted to try putting the plain base onto the stone for a minute, flipping it, leaving for 1 - 2mins and then proceeding as above.
I've no idea if it will work, but could be fun to try!
Toppings:
We tried four toppings on the night:
1. Tomato sauce, chrizo (which had been chopped and fried previsously), lots of basil leaves and grated mozzarella.
2. Tomato sauce, grilled eggplant and grated mozzarella.
3. Tomato sauce, capers, anchovies, chilli and ricotta.
4. Tomato sauce, mushroom and grated mozzarella.
Your sourdough pizza looks amazing! I am not sure if you have heard of Sourdough Surprises yet or not (http://sourdoughsurprises.blogspot.com), but they just made sourdough pizzas this month, too! You should totally link this post up to their linky, and come try out what they do next month, too!
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